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The Experience of The Kingdom Of God

The Experience of The Kingdom Of God

Chapter:

(p.71)
5 The Experience of The Kingdom Of God

Source:

The Experience of God

Author(s):

Kevin Hart

Publisher:

Fordham University Press

DOI:10.5422/fso/9780823225187.003.0006

This chapter begins by pondering a man knocking on your door and saying, simply, “I have experienced God”. What could this mean? At the least, it signals that, if we are to encounter God in any way or to any extent, we must do so in the medium of experience. It does not follow, however, that the divine must present itself as an item of experience. This chapter seeks to determine the figure that “God and experience” cuts against the ground of the New Testament. Accordingly, it grants a privilege to prayer, and notes that all prayer, no matter of what sort, is a response to a prior call. Strictly speaking, we cannot talk of experiencing God. Instead, we must invoke a different figure, one that bespeaks both faith and response, namely “counterexperience”. Counterexperience unsettles us, invites us to stand only in the ground and abyss of faith and there to see our experiences from the perspective of divine love. This chapter resets the question of experiencing God so that it concerns the experience of the Kingdom of God.

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PRINTED FROM FORDHAM SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.fordham.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Fordham University Press, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in FSO for personal use (for details see www.fordham.universitypressscholarship.com/page/privacy-policy).date: 21 March 2019